The historic Berlin Hotel faced the wrecking ball in the late 1990s, but was instead moved up the White Horse Pike in the borough. / Courier-Post file

DID YOU KNOW?

When the White Horse Pike (Route 30) was opened in 1922, connecting Camden and Atlantic City through downtown Berlin Borough, it was the longest concrete-paved highway in the world.

HISTORY HIGHLIGHTS

1714: First settlement is established.

1766: Berlin Cemetery is established.

1812: Post office is established.

1826-27: Berlin Hotel property is occupied.

1854: Rail line between Atlantic City and Camden begins operating through town.

1856: Rail station is built.

1871: Long-a-Coming is renamed Berlin Borough.

1915: First concrete sidewalks in the borough are poured outside the new Berlin National Bank.

1922: White Horse Pike (Route 30) is paved between Atlantic City and Camden through the borough.

1929: Berlin Park is established as part of the Camden County Park system.

1960s: Rail station is closed.

1997: Berlin Hotel is threatened with demolition.

2000: Berlin Hotel is moved to new site on Route 30.

Sources: "Courier-Post" ar- chives, "Camden County and the Making of A Metropolitan Commu- nity" by Jeffery Dorwart; nextina tion.com/longacoming/berlin

LANDMARKS IN BERLIN BOROUGH

1. The Berlin Hotel is the oldest commercial building on Route 30 (The White Horse Pike) between Philadelphia and Atlantic City. The exact date the hotel was built is not known, but the deed to Thomas Wright, the first owner, shows that he was living there as early as 1826-27. In 1998, it was put on Preservation New Jersey's list of 10 Most Endangered Historic Buildings. In March 2000, the hotel was moved to a new location not far from the original spot.

2. At the Berlin Cemetery, the current cemetery office was once a log cabin. King George III of England deeded the land to Samuel Scull for 5 shillings. The deed was written in 1766 on sheepskin. The cemetery fell into neglect and in 1884, the Berlin Cemetery Associtation was formed and continues to this day.

3. Berlin Train Station is the oldest existing station in New Jersey and is is listed on the New Jersey and National Registry of Historic Places. Originally called the Long-A-Coming Station, it was built in 1856.

QUOTABLE

"Nobody knows why Berlin was chosen."

Borough Web site on how its name was picked, to replace Long-a-Coming

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Transportation -- by foot, water, stagecoach, railroad and highway -- indisputably has defined Berlin Borough, a 3.58-square-mile Camden County community of 6,149 people.

But a dispute of sorts has long existed about the origins of the borough's former name, Long-a-Coming.

Legend, both oral and written, has it that "Long-a-Coming" came about because of a band of shipwrecked sailors. However charming, the story is "apocryphal," declares longtime South Jersey historian and former Camden County Historical Society executive director Paul Schopp.

But first, the charm.

A 1949 Courier-Post story cites George R. Prowell's A History of Camden County and its account of a tale about a band of wandering seamen from a ship that ran aground near Absecon.

As the story goes, the sailors followed the old Lenni-Lenape footpath from Absecon toward Philadelphia, having learned from the Indians of a refreshing stream -- apparently, the Great Egg Harbor River, the headwaters of which are near where the Berlin Shopping Center now stands.

The seamen "travelled several days through the wastelands (with) no discovery of water," the Courier-Post, citing Prowell's book, "The blazing sun and the scorching white sand had the group on the edge of desperation."

"When the stream finally came into sight, the story goes, it was . . . kept cool by low hanging pine boughs, which swung over its course. The leader of the group, beholding its beauty, is credited by Prowell with saying, 'Here you are though long-a-coming.' "

Other accounts credit travelers, also unnamed, on the stagecoach line that ran through what is now Berlin Borough in the early 1800s. They supposedly observed that it took a long time to reach Berlin.

Charming tales, to be sure. But "fakelore" nevertheless, Schopp says.

The name Long-a-Coming actually arose from lonaconing, the Lenni-Lenape name for the footpath that ran through what is now the borough from the Delaware River to the Atlantic Ocean.

"You can still see the trail in aerial photos from the 1930s," Schopp says. "The stories are great, but they're apocryphal."

According to the Long-a-Coming Historical Society, iron forges and glassworks were the major enterprises in early 19th century Berlin.